Even more professional rugby in the Boston area? You bet! Can’t wait to get to a Banshees match! 2 games at the familiar Fort Quincy and 2 in convenient Pawtucket! 🏉

NEFJ’s Tom Kindly on NBC Sports Boston: www.nbcsportsboston.com/rugby/new…

Apple TV+ Introduces 'Sunday Night Soccer' With Weekly MLS Matches - MacRumors:

Apple and Major League Soccer today introduced Sunday Night Soccer. Apple TV+ subscribers will be able to watch a featured MLS match every Sunday evening during the upcoming 2025 season, at no additional cost.

That leaves “Saturday is for Rugby” open… Apple, MLR are you listening? :)

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Finished reading: The Armageddon Protocol by Dan Moren 📚I’d been putting this off a little bit because Dan’s books are so hard to put down and I didn’t want to say goodbye to Kovalic and crew. Fantastic romp. Alleged finale but like all the best series finales it leaves one wanting more.

An excellent post: Ricky Mondello » Magic Links Have Rough Edges, but Passkeys Can Smooth Them Over - micro.blog could really use passkeys too, @manton :)

In BlueSky I applaud the desire to avoid passwords but magic links are awful UX. The shorter version should be “we use magic links because that’s what ghost uses”. Passkeys aren’t mentioned except as followup to the BlueSky. Even Apple/google/microsoft logins would be better.

Has anyone I know tried galaxy.ai? Pricing seems too good to be true at $15/mo

There’s still a couple of days left in September which is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. And once again I am joining the Relay fundraiser for St Jude. Please help me help Relay break their fundraising goals for this amazing cause.

Friends in the area… if you haven’t seen a rugby match yet, this is the 3rd consecutive year the local professional rugby team is hosting the eastern conference final and it’s the perfect time to come and find out what you’re missing. Fast moving, hard hitting and fun on the field. Live music and meet the professional players after the match AND you get to hang out with the best sports fans in all of New England, if not the country!

seatgeek.com/new-engla…

#GoodLuckFreeJacks

Reverse happy hour | Morning Brew:

Knightscope uses the funds to help make the country safer. Their autonomous security robots (ASRs) are already helping law enforcement fight crime.

I’d never heard of Knightscope before, but checking out their website I’m getting serious Robocop vibes…

My American friends will be disappointed to find out this is the equivalent of dollar tree.

Last year, I studiously kept a spreadsheet updated with their weekly MLR predictions from 5 New England FreeJacks fans and 1 Old Glory DC fan as a self proclaimed Jacks Rangers Show super fan. After each match I’d then update the spreadsheet with the wins, recalculate results then myself and TJRS would share them to the FreeJacks fan base.

We ran an experiment in the post season for more fans to participate in these weekly predictions and had quite a few entries without too much promotion.

So for MLR 2024, I’m pleased to announce that we’re going bigger than ever. We now have a website and will be taking predictions from any MLR fan via a Google Form. The form will be refreshed each Monday in the regular season.

Set a reminder and remember to visit https://rangerpicks.micro.blog/ every Monday in the MLR regular season!

MLR, World Rugby, USA Rugby forge historic partnership - Anthem RC:

CHARLOTTE-BASED EXPANSION CLUB WILL BE COMMITTED TO U.S. NATIONAL TEAM DEVELOPMENT AND WILL COMPETE IN 2024 MLR SEASON

Now to update my #RangerPicks spreadsheet…. again!

ICYMI RugbyMorning and JacksRangers broke the news of the return of #RangerPicks for #MLR2024 - bigger and better than ever!

Way to go kid!

Just so I’m clear about my feelings on the Charlotte Hawks rumors. I’m super excited, it is awesome news for MLR, I just wish it’d been sorted earlier for fans who travel and fans who are trying to manage a monster spreadsheet. (Just me? Ok)

Home and away kits for all 11 clubs unveiled for 2024 - Major League Rugby:

Ranger Payne rankings:

1. FreeJacks home
2. FreeJacks away
3. Chicago Hounds home
4. NOLA Gold away
5. Houston Sabercats away
6. Chicago Hounds away (at least there’s the collar)
7. Houston Sabercats home (collar, but black is boring)
8. Miami Sharks home (bold and bright but no collar and looking like refs)
10. All the others

RIP to one of the greats

And if OverDrive goes belly-up at some point in the future, crushed by KKR’s leveraged debt, it’s going to take down access to the digital catalogs of nearly every public library in North America.

A pretty bleak picture painted about the state and risk of overdrive/libby. I had no idea it was aquired by KKR 3 years ago 😱

Carrot weather year in review

Still waiting for the schedule but the Competition Format update is going to take a moment to process. We’ve gone from 2 conferences with a 6 team playoff to an aborted attempt at 3 divisions with 8 team playoff to a single league table with 8 out of 11 teams making the playoffs.

Waiting for the 2024 MLR schedule to drop like:

How does this account have more than 0 followers?

If only there were some official news (including a schedule!) from the league but I’m excited to see some optimism from someone!